Category Archives: App Stores

Android, Android Marketplace, App Stores, Apple, Games, Gaming Industry, General, India, Nasscom GDC

A Round-Up of the NASSCOM Game Developer’s Conference 2015

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Usually November is the time when Indian game developers start prepping themselves to attend the annual gaming event in Pune, India – The NASSCOM Game Developers Conference.

NASSCOM GDC has carved a niche for itself for being the premier gaming event in India. Since its inception in 2009, it has become almost ritualistic for game developers to attend the event every year. Some attend it to network, some to learn the new trends of the industry and some to show their games and get feedback.

The game development community is no longer naive. There are stories of acquisitions, funding, publishing deals, startups and new indie studios. And making these stories are the talented bunch of game designers, artists, programmers, producers, analysts and students with a curiosity of what beholds them. It is always great to meet and hear the personal triumphs and challenges of the game developers. Most of them don’t shy from talking about their games and are always open for feedback. This is how the community thrives.

Students demoing their games
Students demoing their games

According to The NASSCOM Developer Survey, nearly 65% of developers are employed with Indie Studios. 40% of developers have no prior gaming experience while the number of women in the industry is 15%. These numbers are good considering how fragile it is to survive in the industry. Those who are there, are because of their passion for games and motivation to build something beautiful.

This year the event started with a day full of workshops followed by 2 days of the conference. There were 5 tracks running simultaneously –Indie Development, Game Design, Game Art, Technology, Marketing and PR, with a mix of Indian and international speakers.

Women in Game Dev Meet-Up at ABC Farms
Women in Game Dev Meet-Up

Apart from the workshops and sessions there was an Investor Meetup, Games Pitch and Women in Game Dev Lunch meetup.

The tracks had informative content that was catered for the casual mobile gaming industry.This was one particular session conducted on serious gaming where the speakers shared ideas on Gamifying Maths and Geography for school students. It was interesting to see how they converted the concepts of Fraction into visuals for learning. The same visual learning could be applied to any subject be, it School Maths or other domains.

The postmortem on the game UNWYND, took us through the journey of a game where the developer explained how they uplifted a failed game on Android to Editor’s Choice on iOS. The developer emphasized on showing games to as many people as possible and implementing feedback early. Attending conferences and using social media to know people and maintaining friendships is definitely a catalyst to getting visibility.

The track on Game Design about making your players love your game in the first session explained how using minimum steps to reach the core game loop was critical. Only 20% of games make it past the first session therefore it was recommended to never dump the player with too many layers at start of the game, stimulate the player’s senses with animations and use notifications wisely to get your players back to the game.

The panel discussion on Indian Publishing deals had contradicting views. While some on the panel felt that Publishers help get a new game gain visibility, others felt that the presence of publishers could invalidate the original vision of the game. All agreed that it is possible for both the developers and publishers to have a win.

The Secret Sauce of App Stores Talk
The Secret Sauce of App Stores Talk

India may start seeing more gaming events in the future. At least that’s what the developers hope for. PocketGamer Connect already happened last year in Bangalore. But NASSCOM GDC will continue to drive developers. Looking forward to the event next year!

Android, App Stores, Apple, Games, Gaming Industry, General, iOS, Mobile

The Science Behind Mobile Gaming Addiction

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Everyone who loves playing games, is at some point at risk of being converted to a full fledged video game addict (although this may not be a very bad thing :)).

And those in the business of making games, always aim at owning atleast one title that can lead to such addiction.

Mobile games today is a multi-billion dollar industry where just 0.15% of the mobile gamers bring in 50% of the revenue. The paying customers are small but they can be attributed as video game addicts. But they are not the only ones. There are some persistent players who keep grinding through levels without making any purchases, and they can be just as guilty of being addicts.

What makes games so enticing? Well, the science of mobile game addiction has been explained with an infographic below. Read it to find more –

AddictiveGamingSource: Online-Psychology-Degrees.org

ActionScript3, Adobe, App Stores, Apple, Devices, Facebook, Flash, Flash Platform, Games, General, IGameStudio, iOS, iTunes, Mobile

Stop That Silly Chicken game for iPad

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Stop That Silly Chicken

With the successful release of “Stop That Silly Chicken”, it is heartening to say that the game was developed using Adobe AIR for the iOS platform.

Stop That Silly Chicken is currently available on the iPad and iPhones. The game uses Milkman Games native extensions for social media and advertising. It also uses a native extension for in-app alerts.

Silly Chicken is a character owned by 9X Media, a brand providing entertainment on television through their various music and cartoon channels.

The game concept revolves around Silly Chicken who runs around a kitchen table in a quest to steal and break the eggs kept safely in a bowl. The player has to tap Silly Chicken before he reaches the table. The player can collect game coins from piggy banks and use them to make purchases from the game store that will make it easier to trap Silly Chicken. The game has 2 modes – Survival and Time mode and both are easy to understand and play. The game is completely free using an advertising model with Admob.

I’ve been reading the comments of the players since its release and glad to see it being liked. It seem that the idea of tapping Silly Chicken and seeing its reactions through different animations is funny for many.

Please download the game if you haven’t already and spread the word about it!

Mariam

App Stores, Devices, Games, General, HTML5, Mobile, Nokia, Nokia Developer, Windows Phone

Nokia unveils Lumia 920 and Lumia 820

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Nokia unveiled their new phones today in one of the awaited Nokia announcements of the year. These were the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Lumia 820 based on the Windows Phone 8 OS.

Nokia defines the Lumia 920 to be the “World’s Most Innovative Smartphone” with it’s 4.5 inch screen with an LCD display, Snapdragon S4 dual-core 1.5 Ghz processor, 2000 mAh battery, integrated NFC, Puremotion HD+, and the PureView camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. What also seemed attractive was a demonstration of their super sensitive touch technology that made a touch on the phone screen in any form be it with gloves or with bare hands very easy and intuitive.

A big thumbs up to the built-in Wireless Charging in the Lumia 920 which makes it easy to charge the phone using the Nokia Wireless Charging Plates, the Fatboy Pillow and even the JBL Power Up Speaker. They announced partnerships with Virgin Atlantic and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf outlets to implement these wireless charging plates.

Another technology that powers the Nokia Lumia 920 is the PureView imaging technology that uses the optical image stabilization system which holds the camera still even if the hands are a little shaky giving more stable and less blurry videos and photos.

Speaking about the app market, the event had demos of apps including the City Lens demonstration of the Location Suite, Nokia Music, Angry Birds Roost and the Cinemagraph. It was said that the Windows Phone marketplace has grown from 7K apps to 100K and most of the demoed apps would be made available with the existing devices.

Nokia has a lot riding with this launch. It was an anticipated announcement because Nokia has been in the news for all the wrong reasons and they really needed something impactful in their announcement to get back into the game with their competitors. With the announcement today, the strongest has been their imaging technology with PureView and their wireless charging. The release dates for these devices are not out yet so we have to wait to try the devices and everything shown today.

Mariam

 

App Stores, Apple, Devices, Games, General, iOS, Mobile

The Act Game review

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Playing the Act Game is like a watching a beautiful movie. It took me back to the times when I used to watch the classic Disney cartoons on TV, with the only difference being The Act on iOS has some interactivity to keep the user engaged as any game ideally should. I thought of reviewing this game simply because it has a very different gaming experience seen after a long time.

The story begins with Edgar a window washer with the City Medical Hospital spotting Sylvia the nurse through the hospital window and instantly falling in love with her. He dreams of romancing her, but is interuppted by his boss. He is forced to continue cleaning the windows with his sleepy brother Wally when all of a sudden, his brother enters the hospital room through the window and gets into an empty bed. The story then takes Edgar inside the hospital and through various situations involving Sylvia and other characters to rescue his brother from being mistaken to be a patient requiring a brain transplant.

The game animations play very smoothly. The artists have used the classical hand drawn animation style, so the quality of animations are very high. The characters are superbly designed and one can understand their emotions through their expressions.

The controls are very simple involving sliding the finger on the left or right side of the screen. All game interactivity have Edgar responding to the player swipes.  The music too is beautifully rendered and suits the game perfectly. The only issue with the game is that is has a very small game length. One can easily finish it in 30-45 mins.

I remember reading somewhere that the team working on this concept had been test marketing it since 2007 but cancelled launching it then. It has finally released in 2012 on the iOS platform published by Chillingo and is worth a play just for its uniqueness.

Android, Android Marketplace, App Stores, Apple, General, India

Store Wars for the Game of Phones

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Apple iTunes and Google Play together dominate consumer attention for application downloads. But when pitted against each other, they can get quite competitive!

App Store Stats

Stats say, Japan is amongst the top 3 countries for app download and revenue on both the stores. It is also amongst the Top 3 for the fastest growing markets for revenue. US and UK are also amongst the top 3 countries.

Google Play considers Brazil to be amongst the topmost countries to tap in terms of revenues expecting 88% growth.

India even with its large population would take some time to build a profitable market for smartphone apps because we still have a majority of our people using feature phones/low end phones.

Mariam